Hackers even get Hacked

Underground criminals are not immune to their own kind, it seems. Are cyber-criminals competing among themselves? A recent hacking by an unknown group of a server belonging to an underground credit card clearing house revealed that maybe there isn’t honor among thieves. The information posted online was confirmed credible by the Trend Micro researcher who analyzed its content.

The unknown group divulged sensitive data with so much detail that it will surely affect the operation of Fethard, a service that allowed customers to send money anonymously, and has put the underground company, which so happens to be Fethard’s mother company, in even more dire straits. Fethard has been known to process the credit and debit card payments from bogus anti-virus suppliers, and select porn sites.

Among the compromised information were the e-mails of employees

and recorded phone conversations. One interesting conversation talked about how to swindle money from credit card companies. Upon investigation, it was ascertained that the company mentioned that processed the credit cards were actually based in the Netherlands yet most of its labor were done in Russia and Latvia. Information on its customers was also divulged whether they were legitimate clients or were connected to devious organizations.

They were reported to having taken on these devious organizations because of the need of capital to keep their business running. It seems that in 2007, Fethard became a victim of cybercrime when a great amount of money was stolen from them. Even then, their systems had already been compromised. It looks like they weren’t paying much attention to their own security measures and did not know to what extent their servers were vulnerable.

If even cyber-criminals are not immune to their own medicine, it will surely make them think twice before going into more nefarious cyber-business. One even begins to wonder if this was the work of hackers to aid law enforcement or just other criminals trying to get even.

Unfortunately even if these types of measures hamper criminals, the customers and other end-users that were conned of their money are left even more vulnerable as their personal information are made public and could be used against their wishes.